Reapers go to Andromeda
by Geralt
Summary: Shepard chose Synthesis, and the galaxy prospered. Except, Shepard's consciousness somehow ended up in a brand new Reaper body. And unfortunately for the Reapers, they have emotions now, which means that Harbinger is fuming and cursing the day he heard Shepard's name. So what could possibly go wrong once Shepard convinces everyone to go to Andromeda just for shits and giggles?


_**DISCLAIMER – I do not own Mass Effect franchise, the story, or any of its characters. All rights go to Bioware.**_

 _ **ALSO, this story intentionally has ZERO logic about it and is written just for shits and giggles.**_

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 **Reapers go to Andromeda**

.

It was finished… The Cycle was finished.

For a billion years, he had existed. And for a billion years, he had led the Cycles, reaping the species and imposing order upon chaos. For a billion years, he had kept the galaxy safe from the mutually-assured destruction that had plagued the aeons when the Leviathans ruled, and now, the Cycle was done.

It was hard, back then. He was the first, and only a few dozen of his brethren had ascended to perfection with him during the First Cycle. They were the eldest. And he was the leader of them all. And now, after a billion years, over 19000 Great Ascended, and over 150000 of the Lesser Ascended stood side by side with him. Each of them a nation. Together – the Force.

As he turned his huge, 2-kilometer tall body, he gazed upon the segment of the legion of his brethren that stood behind him. They were… perfect. Their forms, their minds, their potential, their indomitable strength that had felled so many species before. Indomitable.

Suddenly, a single Ascended's voice pierced the solemn silence of their hyper-advanced comm link:

"I'M BORED!"

Harbinger jerked in disbelieving shock. An… Ascended… had dared… to disrupt the solemn order?! Unacceptable! He sent his hyper-advanced algorithms through the comm-network, searching for the disrespectful perpetrator.

Nothing… He came up with nothing! The lil' bastard had actually had the gall to hide from him! A surge of anger rose through him as he cast his furious gaze around the nearby Ascended, all of them glancing to one another from the corner of their eyes, trying to school their metallic faces and AI protocols from broadcasting. Harbinger was furious.

"Who said that?!" he demanded, looking around the bunch.

"I said I'm _bored_ , not bloody stupid!" came the same voice from somewhere.

Suddenly, like dams had been burst, the entire Reaper host burst into a raucous laughter, shaking their shells where they stood.

Harbinger sent a furious gaze left, right, all around, before he finally shouted above all others:

"SILENCE!"

Reluctantly, the laughter subsided, with a few sniggers breaking the surface here or there. Harbinger's subroutines took a deep, composing breath before he crossed his rear tentacles behind his back and began pacing angrily before the Reaper host.

"You see?! This is what I'm talking about," He spoke heatedly. "We are supposed to be the Ascended! The Perfect Ones! The soldiers and caretakers of the Solution to the mutual destruction and chaos that the organic life has imposed! Yet, look at you! Emotional, gallivanting, lollygagging, being cheerful!"

A nearby Reaper sniggered silently, nudging his Reaper buddy next to him with his tentacle elbow. "Lolly-gagging," he intoned, to what the other Reaper sniggered silently as well before the stern-looking Harbinger suddenly appeared before their faces.

Both Reapers suddenly choked down their laughter, trying to appear professional, but their smirks of amusement were radiating through their AI protocols for all to see. Harbinger was fuming.

"You should be better than this," he growled. "You are supposed to be the unstoppable machines of destruction! You should be –"

"Oh, come now, man, give the guys some slack!" came from one of the Reapers that stood at the side.

"YOU, be silent!" Harbinger shouted, rounding up on him and pointing an accusing tentacle at him. "This is all YOUR fault!"

The accused Reaper sighed, spreading his tentacles and looking to the few of his Reaper friends that stood with him like a posse.

"Oh, come now, you can't blame me for this," he said. "It's not my fault for trying to defend my own species – all of my fellow species."

The Reapers of his posse nodded solemnly.

"Not your fault?!" Harbinger fumed, striking downward with his tentacles. "You just HAD to choose Synthesis instead of Control, didn't you?! NOW look at us!" He spread his tentacles, pointing all around. "All of the Ascended had gained organic properties from Synthesizing with YOU. I'd call it human nature, but I can't because I've been around long enough to see it in EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN SPECIES since the beginning of time! And look – I'm cursing GOD, when I don't even believe in god! It's your accursed humanity that has infected all of us." Harbinger huffed angrily, crossing his tentacles in front of his face. "I wish I never met you, Shepard!"

Shepard-Reaper and his Reaper posse instantly perked up, ready to go to Shepard's defense.

"Now, that last is not my fault and you know it," Shepard said, raising a tentacle in a halting motion.

"Yeah, that one's pretty much on you, Harbinger," the closest Reaper to Shepard chided, his comm-voice bearing a typical turian sub-vocal harmonics, and his Reaper form lean and somewhat spiky. "I mean, all you had to do was wait a century or so for Shepard here to die, but nooooo – you had to send Collectors to kill him! And look what that brought you – all you did was piss him off."

"Thanks, Garrus," Shepard-Reaper said, tentacle-bumping the second Reaper.

"Besides, I don't know what's so wrong about all of us having organic traits," a deep, gruff, krogan voice barked from the nearby Reaper joining Shepard and Garrus, his Reaper form extra big, bulky, with additional heavy plates all over, and entirely painted in dark red. "I mean, what's the point of living an infinite life if you can't butt heads with someone? It just isn't fun!"

"And besides," a fourth Reaper spoke in a velvety, husky voice, its form sleek and curvy, "Isn't it amazing to have this new point of view? To have the collective knowledge of all species at your finger – well, tentacle-tips – and to enjoy the spectrum of emotions and points of view of hundreds of thousands of species? It's the apex of what our Asari mind meld would be!"

"You tell him, honey," Shepard said, then turned to Harbinger. "We should be spreading love, not war. Frankly, I don't get it why you're so upset about this 'order' of yours being improved by having emotions."

Harbinger glared at him furiously. "You want to know why it's upsetting me?" he growled, then floated up to a few nearby Reapers and pushed them away with his mass effect fields, revealing the sight behind them.

"THIS is what's upsetting me!" Harbinger shouted accusingly, pointing a tentacle. "Look! Lyssara and Gorth are shagging in the middle of open vacuum of space without giving a fuck about all propriety!"

Shepard and his posse gaped at the sight. Truth to the word, Reaper Gorth had installed an appendage which he had up until that point happily been using on Lyssara, who had obviously been welcoming it immensely.

"Uhh… well…" Shepard spoke haltingly. "I mean… what's so big of a deal if they are, anyway? Liara and I do it all the time!"

"You and your asari at least have the decency to forge semi-organic bodies and then find a room," Harbinger grumbled then swiped his tentacle toward the scene. "These two, however, do it in the middle of vacuum for everyone to see! What will people say?! How are we supposed to preserve our reputation as the dreadful destroyers of worlds we're supposed to be if organics see us doing _this?_ "

"Harbinger?" Lyssara suddenly asked in a feminine voice as she and Gorth stopped their fooling around. "Is there a problem?"

"Is there…!" Harbinger parroted before he rounded up on here. "Of course there is a problem! You two are shagging like… like… like organics!"

"Well, sooorrrry," she said exaggeratedly, not feeling sorry in the least, "but us, Lyssara, used to have been a very promiscuous all-female species, if you remember. And Gorth here were an all-male species. Why don't you let us enjoy ourselves now that we have rediscovered our emotional sides?"

Shepard-Reaper shared an incredulous look with his posse. "All-male?"

"H… how does that even work?" Garrus-Reaper groused.

"Well, universe and evolution work in mysterious ways, kids," Gorth said.

"Ummm," Liara-Reaper spoke slowly. "Well, that might be nice, but, umm… Harbinger kinda has a point. Shouldn't you two find a room or… um… a planet?"

Lyssara sighed. "Fine. Come, Gorth, let's continue this inside Jupiter. I hear it's quite _hot_ and _turbulent_ inside," she added with innuendo, then waved a tentacle dismissively. "See ya later, Harb! And do something with that temper, before you pop a circuit, will ya?"

The two Reapers instantly turned, giggling like teenagers, and jumped into FTL, leaving the large gathering. Harbinger's big left eye pulsed a few times in its corner like its eyelid was twitching in anger.

"She's right, you know," Shepard nudged him with his tentacle elbow. "You do need to relax. Do what Liara and I do: spawn a semi-organic body, then go find yourself a girl or two. I always go for spawning both male and female version of myself when fooling around with Liara; more fun that way. Oh, but you can go for your original body, too! Kasumi tells me there's a crapload of girls back at her home that are _very_ much into tentacles. You'd be immensely popular! I can already see it: Leviathan on human and asari girls – a gentacle in every hole! Whaddaya say?"

Harbinger lashed out with his tentacles and grabbed Shepard at where his neck would normally be, starting to squeeze.

" **This hurts you,** " he rumbled mechanically.

"Um… no, it doesn't…?" Shepard replied in slight confusion at him.

" **You** _ **will**_ **know pain, Shepard,"** Harbinger continued.

"Ah, crap, now look what you've made him do; you've made him revert to his previous software build," Garrus complained in exasperation.

"Come along, big guy, enough of that," Wrex called as he and Garrus reached out and pried Harbinger's tentacles from where Shepard's supposed neck would be.

" **No! If I must tear him apart I –"**

SLAP! – Went Liara's tentacle across Harbinger's cheek.

"Now, now! Snap out of it," she chided not unkindly, like a mother lecturing a child. "It is unbecoming of someone a billion years old."

Harbinger shook his head, snapping out of it as his AI protocols reverted their Post-Synthesis subroutines to their proper states.

Harbinger turned an accusing look toward Shepard.

"Look what you're responsible for, Shepard," he growled. "I was once great and unflinching! Quadrillions trembled before me and we were the apex species! And now, we are reverting to organic chaos. This is all your fault! I wish I never met you!"

"Oh, come now, Harby, it's not that bad," Shepard said as he approached him and hugged him with one tentacle around his back and pointed with his other tentacle toward the nearby planet Earth.

"Just look at that," Shepard said. "It's been only 600 years since the Synthesis and the end of War, and look how we've all advanced. The spacefaring organic species are practically immortal, each possessing the power of AIs in their minds and able to control technology with a mere thought. They all have biotics, are able to control and adjust their own individual genes at will, even altering their bodies on the fly! They're building Dyson Spheres, terraforming dead planets to full garden world state in mere years – hell, even building whole new worlds and _stars_ from scratch! Mass relay network has been quintupled in size and expanded to the nearby dwarf galaxies, and with the collective knowledge of all the Ascended Species, we are at the threshold of transcendence that neither YOU nor that idiot brat Catalyst could have imagined before we all Synthesized 600 years ago."

"I still don't like it," Harbinger muttered sulkily, his tentacles crossed before him.

"Oh, come now, don't be a grouch," Liara-Reaper urged him good-naturedly from his side. "We understand you're a billion years old. It'll take a bit more than 600 years for you to adapt, but you'll see! Everything will be alright."

Harbinger sighed sullenly, with Shepard and Liara sharing an amused look over him.

Suddenly, a Reaper popped out of FTL near them.

"Harbinger!" it shouted, his processors sending heuristics of having ran at full FTL from wherever he came. "Look! I found this at the edge of the Galaxy!"

Harbinger and Shepard's posse looked interestedly as Thanazad-Reaper passed a comparatively small, but obviously well-built and powered-up probe with his mass effect manipulating fields.

Harbinger picked it up with his mass effect fields, bringing it up to his six eyes, then placed it in his mandibles where a million of tiny tentacles gently probed and examined the satellite, seeking its data.

"Shepard," Harbinger called after a moment. "What's 'Andromeda Initiative'?" he asked carefully as he sent out the detailed data for all to see.

Shepard and his posse carefully looked at the numerous data, most important of which was a countdown timer with a tag: 'Estimated Time To Andromeda Arrival: 28 years, 0 months, 13 days.'

"Oh! I know!" Liara exclaimed eagerly. "Just before the War started, a large, organized expedition set out for Andromeda Galaxy! I should know! I corresponded with one of their higher-ups! One Alec Ryder – a former N7."

Shepard quickly sent an inquiry through the population of Sol system, seeking some who would have the remaining information. He was happy to find out that several dozen of the post-synthesis humans from the time of the War had survived and had information about it, sending it back to him in a fraction of a second that their hyper-advanced minds could do.

"Amazing!" he said. "There were over 100000 colonists of several different species! They made huge Arks and went through Dark Space."

"That's impossible," Harbinger declared. "None of your species had the technological potential to build vessels that could cross Dark Space."

"No, we did, it's just that it was a bit tricky to achieve, and nobody wanted to bother with thousands of mass relays already around," Liara replied.

"Except humans," Garrus ranted from his Reaper body. "The most reckless and unheeding species of all times. Tell them there's a big man in the sky that created everything and they'll accept it, no questions asked, but tell 'em the paint is wet, and they need to touch it to make sure."

"That's why they won the War," Wrex-Reaper said, shrugging.

" _A-ny-way_ ," Liara-Reaper spoke pointedly drawing their attention back, "that probe is still broadcasting that the status of the ships is fully functional with only minor glitches."

"That means they are still traveling to Andromeda," Garrus said.

"And they don't know what has happened here," Liara said with a troubled tone. "But they must've picked up the distress calls. That probe has a quantum communicator inside it. Its status says it transmitted several messages to them. Look. One of them is mine from when the War still raged."

"Once they get there, they'll be distressed," Shepard-Reaper said. "They won't know what has happened here and that might spell the doom of their endeavor." He reared up resolutely. "We have to go to Andromeda and help them!"

"Right," Garrus-Reaper said readily. "Our Reaper forms can travel at over 250 light years per day. It always amazed me how it took the Reaper Host only two and a half years to come from the depths of Dark Space after Sovereign was destroyed. 200000 light years of distance between your sleeping grounds and Alpha Relay, right Harby?"

"Don't call me Harby," Harbinger demanded.

"Right, 250 light years per day!" Shepard said, ignoring Harbinger's grumbling. "It'll take us some 27 years to fly to Andromeda. That's nothing! We'll build another Citadel relay pair – that'll take us, what? Six months, maybe? – and then a squad of us hauls it all the way to Andromeda. Then, we transport a few hundred freshly-built mass relays through the newly-established connection and set forth to colonize the Andromeda Galaxy!"

"Imagine what kind of wondrous new species we might meet there!" Liara exclaimed happily.

"Yeah, except they didn't have Harby's posse here to reap them on a regular basis," Wrex pointed out. "There might be hundreds of species that are even more advanced than US! Thousands even! Hehehe! I would like a little bit of a challenge! Hadn't had a good fight in centuries!"

"Wrex," Liara chided with a disapproving tone.

"Ah, it's okay, little Li," Wrex said. "Just a bit of friendly headbutting, that's all."

"Then it's settled!" Shepard declared. "Garrus, go fetch Tali and Geth from Rannoch. The two of them are the best builders among Reapers; she'll build that trans-galaxy relay pair in a flash! Liara, you're the best spreadsheet specialist of all times – you help with logistics."

"Hey!" Harbinger growled. "I'm the leader of all Reapers here! I should be the one to decide what's done or not."

"Oh, come oooon!" Shepard egged him on good naturedly, hooking his tentacle around Harbinger's back. "It'll be fun! New Galaxy, new species to Ascend… So much different stuff must've happened in Andromeda without the Reapers' influence. It's like Wrex said – they must've developed in a whole new way without Reaper interference. A billion years without Reaper interference? Whoa-ho, I mean, they might truly be more advanced than the Reaper Host is! Come now… don't you feel that itch deep down inside you, telling you that you should go and check it out? You can't tell me that you're not the least bit interested!"

"I'm blaming you and your Synthesis for that," Harbinger grumbled.

"Then it's settled!" Shepard declared merrily. "You're coming with us too! We'll make a great team! You be the harbinger of their perfection, and I'll shepherd them through it. Whaddya say?"

Harbinger narrowed his eyes at him.

"I wish I never met you," he said.

..

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 _ **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**_

 _So, there it is folk – a quirky, crazy, and utterly illogical story! Obviously, it was inspired by Jade Tatsu's amazing works._

 _I am not committed to this story, so I'm not sure whether I'll write more of it, but there are some ideas about it rolling around in my head. So, tell me what you think about it. Maybe, if you feel this little premise I've written is awesome enough, I might dish up some more of the crazy, quirky, and utterly illogical stuff that would go into it._

 _Cheers!_


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